A Linked Index of Mary Whisner's Practicing Reference Articles
Since the inspiration for this newsletter was Mary Whisner’s fantastic Practicing Reference column in Law Library Journal, I thought a good first post for the Lollybrain would be a hyperlinked index for all her Practicing Reference articles. While it’s possible to create a query string on HeinOnline to get a sortable list of all 75 articles that make up her column, it’s surprisingly difficult to find a working open-access version.
So here’s one, sorted from oldest to newest:
Golf Buddy Reference Questions, 91 Law Libr. J. 413-16 (1999)
Researching in an Imperfect World, 91 Law Libr. J. 637-39 (1999)
Celebrating the Virtues of Saying “I Don’t Know”, 91 Law Libr. J. 861-64 (1999)
Bouvier's, Black's, and Tinkerbell, 92 Law Libr. J. 99-106 (2000)
Keeping Up Is Hard to Do, 92 Law Libr. J. 225-30 (2000)
On Asking for Help, 92 Law Libr. J. 377-80 (2000)
Reference Librarians Do Not Work in Steel, 92 Law Libr. J. 601-03 (2000)
The Trouble with Utopia, 93 Law Libr. J. 203-08 (2001)
Encounters with Sources, 93 Law Libr. J. 355-61 (2001)
“Good Reads” in the Law Library?, 93 Law Libr. J. 517-523 (2001)
Finding Out What They Want to Know, 93 Law Libr. J. 727-32 (2001)
Teaching the Art of the Reference Interview, 94 Law Libr. J. 161-66 (2002)
On Having a Bad Day, 94 Law Libr. J. 335-42 (2002)
What Do You Do All Day?, 94 Law Libr. J. 661-66 (2002)
These Are a Few of My Favorite Books, 95 Law Libr. J.129-37 (2003)
Learning from Library Science, 95 Law Libr. J. 295-301 (2003)
Researching Outside the Box, 95 Law Libr. J. 467–73 (2003)
Re: Memos, 95 Law Libr. J. 601–08 (2003)
The Sensory Law Library, 96 Law Libr. J. 185–92 (2004)
Story Time in the Law Library, 96 Law Libr. J.371–80 (2004)
When Judges Scold Lawyers, 96 Law Libr. J. 557–70 (2004)
Alphabetical Order and Other "Simple" Systems, 96 Law Libr. J. 757–63 (2004)
What's in a Statute Name?, 97 Law Libr. J. 169–83 (2005)
On Not Doing Research, 97 Law Libr. J. 391–97 (2005)
Learning a Little About the World: Foreign and International Research and the Nonspecialist, 97 Law Libr. J. 595–604 (2005)
Cool Web Sites, 97 Law Libr. J. 721–28 (2005)
Little Biographies, 98 Law Libr. J. 427–31 (2006)
A Blog's Life, 98 Law Libr. J. 559–67 (2006)
How Do You Know When Research Is Good?, 98 Law Libr. J. 721–25 (2006)
A Manual "To Inform Every Citizen”, 99 Law Libr. J. 159–65 (2007)
On Fun, 99 Law Libr. J. 447–49 (2007)
Just Looking, 99 Law Libr. J. 663–67 (2007)
The Pajama Way of Research, 99 Law Libr. J. 847–50 (2007)
Law Librarian, J.D. or Not J.D.?, 100 Law Libr. J. 185–90 (2008)
The Dreaded Bluebook, 100 Law Libr. J. 393–99 (2008)
Unanswerable Questions, 100 Law Libr. J. 581–86 (2008)
Seeking Inspiration, 100 Law Libr. J. 773–77 (2008)
Learning New Applications, 101 Law Libr. J. 115–20 (2009)
Mattress Tags and Pillow Cases, 101 Law Libr. J. 235–47 (2009)
Getting Facts Straight (and Writing Well, Too), 101 Law Libr. J. 399–407 (2009)
The United States Code, Prima Facie Evidence, and Positive Law, 101 Law Libr. J. 545–56 (2009)
Change and Continuity (Rip Van Winkle’s Reference Office), 102 Law Libr. J. 141–45 (2010)
Learning from Reference Experience, 102 Law Libr. J. 309–14 (2010)
Enact Locally, 102 Law Libr. J. 497–506 (2010)
The Rewards of Tedium, 102 Law Libr. J. 657–63 (2010)
Work Crunch, 103 Law Libr. J. 147–51 (2011)
Relevance, Choices, and the Goldilocks Problem, 103 Law Libr. J. 307–11 (2011)
Everyday Research, 103 Law Libr. J. 491–95 (2011)
Writing Buddies, 103 Law Libr. J. 677–83 (2011)
“That Most Congenial Lawyer/Bibliographer”, 104 Law Libr. J. 135–47 (2012)
Fifty More Constitutions, 104 Law Libr. J. 331–39 (2012)
Negotiating Weaknesses, 104 Law Libr. J. 455–59 (2012)
Books on My Desk, 104 Law Libr. J. 597–606 (2012)
Bitten by the Reading Bug, 105 Law Libr. J. 113–22 (2013)
Other Uses of Legislative History, 105 Law Libr. J. 243–54 (2013)
Some Guidance About Federal Agencies and Guidance, 105 Law Libr. J. 385–94 (2013)
Thanking and Being Thanked, 105 Law Libr. J. 561–66 (2013)
There Oughta Be a Law—A Model Law, 106 Law Libr. J. 125–34 (2014)
The 4-1-1 on Legal Directories, 106 Law Libr. J. 257–66 (2014)
Getting to Know Fastcase, 106 Law Libr. J. 473–81 (2014)
Race and the Reference Librarian, 106 Law Libr. J. 625–32 (2015)
Not What I Planned (A Writing Detour), 107 Law Libr. J. 319–23 (2015)
Exploring Precedent, 107 Law Libr. J. 605–17 (2015)
Animal Stories for Good Reference Librarians, 108 Law Libr. J. 141–46 (2016)
Data, Data, Data, 108 Law Libr. J. 313–19 (2016)
On Specialized Legal Research, 108 Law Libr. J. 483–88 (2016)
Lexicographer for a Day, 109 Law Libr. J. 169–74 (2017)
Service Within and Beyond Our Walls, 109 Law Libr. J. 347–51 (2017)
Negotiating Strengths, 109 Law Libr. J. 487–91 (2017)
My Year of Citation Studies, Part 1, 110 Law Libr. J. 167–80 (2018)
My Year of Citation Studies, Part 2, 110 Law Libr. J. 283–94 (2018)
My Year of Citation Studies, Part 3, 110 Law Libr. J. 419–28 (2018)
My Year of Citation Studies, Part 4, 110 Law Libr. J. 561–77 (2018)
Tuesday Morning Detective Work, 111 Law Libr. J. 157–60 (2019)
Looking for Waldo, 111 Law Libr. J. 613-17 (2019)
Cleaning and Updating the Index
Making this index was a fun exercise in data cleansing, a process that comes up a fair bit as a reference librarian. As it turned out, Mary had (unsurprisingly) already done the vast majority of the required work by listing her Practicing Reference articles on her CV, all hyperlinked to open-access versions of her articles. But some of the links were now dead, and it hardly seemed appropriate to ask a recently retired librarian if she could update her CV.
Since I didn’t have access to Acrobat on my personal laptop, I used a free online PDF-to-doc converter to convert the CV into a somewhat cursed doc file that nevertheless kept intact Mary’s links and citations. I removed extraneous bullet points and spaces using Microsoft Word’s handy Advanced Find and Replace tool, and then copied and pasted the resulting list into Google Sheets.
LOLLYBRAIN TIP
A useful shortcut to memorize for this type of copy-and-paste job is Ctrl+Shift+V (Cmd+Shift+V on Mac), which allows you to paste the content while ignoring the formatting of the original copied text. If you find yourself constantly readjusting the formatting of a copied text to match the rest of your email, this tip is for you.
With the data sort tool in Google Sheets, I reversed the order of the list to its current chronological order. Next, I used deadlinkchecker.com to automate the tedious process of making sure each link worked. I replaced the broken hyperlinks with alternative working links, and was able to find open-access substitutes for most of the dead links in UW’s Scholarship Repository. For two of the articles, I could only find HeinOnline links. Finally, I copied the result into Substack’s WYSIWYG editor, and was happy with how the index came out.
Happy browsing!